Employee demand driving the spread of international work from anywhere [infographic]

From digital nomads to ‘workations’ and ‘bleisure’, international remote work takes many forms. Categorising these can be difficult, due to overlapping approaches and organisations defining similar types of international remote work differently. This blog post focuses on one particular type of international remote work: international work from anywhere, where the employee chooses to work from a different country to the one in which their role is located either for a limited time or on a more permanent basis.

Although it existed on a smaller scale before the Covid-19 pandemic, international work from anywhere has gained in popularity since travel restrictions required organisations to adapt quickly to keep their operations running. The rise is not just a temporary response to the pandemic, however. ECA’s International Remote Work Survey found that most organisations have seen increases in international work from anywhere since the height of the pandemic, with only small minorities seeing decreases. Despite compliance challenges and permanent establishment risk, employee demand and the need to attract and retain talent are expected to drive continued overall growth in the next three years.

Due to international work from anywhere being a relatively new phenomenon, the formal approaches used to manage these employees are still settling down. This is demonstrated by the survey finding that 43% of those with a policy to manage this type of work have had to make changes since its introduction, even though most policies have only been introduced since the start of the pandemic.

The infographic here shows highlights from our new survey, relating to international work from anywhere.

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